Comics leap into the digital age

It was one of the last analogue pleasures of the era; a form of entertainment that seemed immune to digitalisation, both on a practical and aesthetic level. But no more: comic books have entered the download age and suddenly a declining business has the opportunity to find a whole new audience.

The comic is enjoying a resurgence, with digital technology allowing the medium to be seen by a wider audience

Considering how many superhero movies are currently littering your local multiplex, it may seem strange to think that comic books are at one of their lowest ebbs for years. Although a big event can see US comic books sell between 100,000 and 150,000 copies, on a normal month even Superman can sell as little as 20,000.

Obviously interest in the characters and the medium still exists but because traditional comic books are generally impossible to buy outside of specialist shops, most people have no idea how or where to get them. Which is why the concept of downloading them is such a vital move for the industry.

Digital comics have been around for years but in September, DC Comics, publisher of characters such as Superman and Batman, will be the first to release all of its major titles for download on the same day as its traditional paper versions.

Pat Mills, one of the godfathers of the British comics business and creator of 2000AD, is a keen proponent of the shift to digital and has worked on a number of online projects, including a series of celebrity-themed comic strips promoting video game inFamous 2 and his own title, American Reaper.

He says: âWhen I saw the finished versions of the inFamous 2 strips on my Mac, I looked at them and I thought: Yeah, they all look good, theyâre fine. But it was only in the evening when I had my iPhone with me and I was looking through the strips with my partner that I realised it had become a social event.

âYou canât have that much of a social event with a desktop computer but there is something much more intimate about a smartphone or an iPad.â

Despite being best known for macho characters such as Judge Dredd, Mills began his career working on girlsâ comics, which were more successful than boysâ comics in the 1970s. That market has virtually disappeared but working with video-game studio Sony Liverpool, Mills hopes it can return with the introduction of digital distribution.

âItâs more than a hope,â he says. âIt is a reality, itâs starting to happen. The market is still there and digital comics are a way into that market.â

Comic books not only used to cater better to both sexes but they werenât always just about superheroes. âIn the 1950s they really branched out with horror, crime, western and romance titles,â says Paul Gravett (pictured), author of the forthcoming book 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die. âAdults were buying comics in great numbers at that time and it was only with the subsequent crackdown on content, and the introduction of the Comics Code in the US, that comics were made into something infantile.â

Both Mills and Gravett see a chance for a modern renaissance in the comic book industry thanks to digitalisation expanding the audience base and the way the stories are experienced.

âWhat youâve got is a number of ways you can read a digital comic,â says Mills. âYou can read it the old-style way where you see the entire page or, as with one of my old Doctor Who comics, where theyâd taken each picture and put it in a separate slot and you ran your finger along from picture to picture.â

âReading Fantastic Four volume one on the iPad, you click on a page and an individual panel is extracted and youâre able to see it in isolation,â says Gravett. âSo you werenât losing the overall page view and the sense of layout and flow but you could also appreciate each panel separately, which, of course, you canât do in a comic. It turns each panel into a piece of pop art.â

But digital comics donât necessarily signal the end of the traditional paper versions. âDigital sales have gone up but paper sales have gone up as well,â says Mills. âOne is stimulating the other.â

While Hollywoodâs current obsession with comic books is bound to end sooner or later, digital comics, and an even closer relationship with the interactive world, should ensure a much more certain future for the source material.

More than capes and capersTo many people, comics mean superheroes and nothing else. However, since their inception theyâve always been more diverse.

âSuperheroes are a very niche thing but they seem big because everyoneâs heard about the movies,â says author Paul Gravett. âIn actual fact, sales are pretty pitiful. There are more comics readers who donât read superheroes than do.

âIf you look at something like Persepolis, the graphic novel about Iran, it has sold more than two million copies worldwide and been turned into a movie (pictured). Itâs being taught at [US military academy] West Point and been translated into more than 20 languages. That is more significant to people than Captain America dying but DC and Marvel are determined to hang on to their properties, really only so they can sell related products. Itâs the licensing where the money comes from, not from the comics,â he says.

âIn other countries this doesnât happen. In Japan, they donât stick to characters that have been around for 70 years. Similarly, in France theyâve got more than 5,000 books coming out every year and the majority feature new characters.â

Gravett says he doesnât see superheroes as a problem but rather an entry point into a wider world â one that has generated its own stream of more critically successful comic book movies, including Ghost World, Road To Perdition and A History Of Violence.

âThere are enough fantastic ideas in comics for Hollywood to go on pilfering, and possibly ruining them, for decades to come,â he says.